Coal-based catalytic carbon membrane functionalized with nitrogen-doped carbon nanospheres for efficient bisphenol a removal

Abstract

Catalytic membrane process, which combines membrane filtration and advanced oxidation, has promising application prospects in water decontamination. In this work, a novel metal-free coal-based catalytic carbon membrane (PPy/CCM-800) was developed and applied for the typical EDC-bisphenol A (BPA) removal from water via activating peroxymonosulfate (PMS). Morphology investigation manifested that the N-doped carbon nanospheres derived from the pyrolytic PPy particles distributed evenly on the surface of coal-based carbon membrane (CCM). In contrast to bare CCM, catalytic performance of PPy/CCM-800 was significantly enhanced by the anchoring of N-doped carbon nanospheres, and 97.89 % of BPA and 60.83 % of total organic carbon (TOC) can be removed by PPy/CCM-800 during catalytic filtration treatment. Catalytic mechanism investigations confirmed that the excellent decontamination performance of PPy/CCM-800 was attributed to the synergistic effects of radical and non-radical oxidation pathway, and the non-radical pathway (1O2 and direct electron transfer) played the dominant role. Moreover, the possible BPA degradation pathways were proposed based on the density functional theory (DFT) calculations and HPLC-MS results.